Sonlight and FIAR which do I chose?

I have been asked which one - Sonlight or FIAR? This is a very tough question because so far I have not limited myself to one but we are using both so here goes ...

We first started looking for a homeschooling curriculum in 2005 and bought both Sonlight and FIAR at the same time. One came in a box with everything I needed to teach every subject (except Maths as we choose to use Maths-U-See and had to buy that elsewhere), the other came from everywhere I had to hunt and buy the books as I found them, even now I do not have all the books as some are out of print.

Both contain beautiful stories to read and share with your children. Many have become old favourites. I cannot read the PK or B4 FIAR books to just my littlies without the older children stopping what they are doing and wanting to join in listening.

We chose Sonlight because it contained everything I don't have to hunt for the books, or skip the ones that are out of print. The IG (Instructors Guide) schedules all the books for me and gives extra activities and things to talk about as we go. CONVENIENCE. When I first started homeschooling I wanted a guide so I could just tick the boxes and not have to worry if I was covering everything. But I wanted something that involved lots of reading and a very gentle way of learning in order to reflect a Charlotte Mason style of homeschooling. Sonlight has been this.

We choose FIAR because I love the FIAR stories and how you get to spent time slowly reading the books. A lot of the same books are used in Sonlight and FIAR. The difference I have noticed is that Sonlight introduces the books earlier for example The Boxcar children is read in K (5-7yrs) but in FIAR it is read in Beyond FIAR (8-12yrs).

We tend to go slower through Sonlight and add in the FIAR stories to fill in the gaps. Currently a Sonlight core takes us about 1 1/2 years to complete because we lapbook and notebook and add in extras as we go, plus babies and lots of moving house in the past 2 years has slowed us down. We are starting to speed up as the kids grow and life changes so I don't expect the stretched out cores to continue. Although we will still continue to add in extra things as we go.

I like how all the girls (ages 4-9) can be reading the History and Geography Read alouds together but be working on Language Arts at their own level.

Sonlight is focused on reading books and so you read them faster than you do in FIAR. For example you read the story about Ping once but following FIAR you read it everyday for a week while you focus on a different aspect of the book daily. Some kids will love this, others will hate it.

FIAR is not a complete curriculum. You still need to plan out the lessons although the activities are in the manual, you also need to add in a language arts program and a maths program from somewhere else. If you like planning things for yourself then FIAR is an option. Homeschool Share has lots of extra things including lapbooks to go along with the FIAR manuals.

It really depends what you want, personally I think Sonlight provides a better coverage as you can start at age 3 and go right through high school and is planned into time periods of history. FIAR has no real linking between the books chosen in each level other than that they are all good books. They are currently introducing Above and Beyond FIAR which goes past 12 years of age (at this stage there is only one book planned but I am sure there will be others). I personally feel that Sonlight will be a better choice for our family as our children get older and I can see FIAR slowly being put aside and Sonlight becoming our main curriculum.

My only complaint with Sonlight so far is the Language Arts program. I am still struggling to get this to work for Zebra BUT she has had learning difficulties and struggled from the start. But this is the only area of the program where I feel like I am having to "rewrite" it to fit my child's style of learning.

I hope this answers your questions. If not leave a comment and I will try to answer it.

Continent Boxes

What is a continent box?
It is a Montessori tool that is used to aid children in their learning about the world continents. There is a good explanation and photos at Montessori for Everyone. At the bottom of the post there are links to more continent boxes.

My favourite link is from Serendipity Blog here. If you scroll down she includes a very good general notion of what to put into each box.

Our Continent Boxes
We are slowly putting together our continent boxes and I found this site that has travel guides for most cities in the world. We will be adding some of these into our boxes as they fit with our learning.

There is a yahoo group continentswap for those who would like to participate in swaps and collect things for their continent boxes. We are currently engaged in 2 swaps one with a family in France and one with a teacher in Japan.

Wombats operation

I have not been posting much the last few weeks because I have been occupied with Wombat. He was born with Infantile Esotropia. 4 weeks ago we had to travel to Perth (a 7 1/2 hour + drive) so he could undergo an operation on both eyes in the hope of straightening them. So far we have had a fairly good result, although in the past week we have noticed that when he is tired or unwell the eyes automatically turn in.

The first photo is in hospital before surgery. The second is at home a week after surgery

Already Wombat is walking more and his gross motor development is improving, we are so thankful to our Heavenly Father for his overshadowing hand, and kindness is granting our little man a fairly successful operation so far and also thankful to Dr Tandon and the Staff at Princess Margaret Hospital.

Consequently my posts have been far and few between BUT I am working on a lot of new projects. I hope to have more THRASS linked resources up soon and also some continent resources to share.

FIAR volume 1 book list

Here is the book list for FIAR Volume 1 - I will add links as we row these stories.

The Story about Ping by Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese
Lentil by Robert McCloskey
Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno
The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills
Who Owns the Sun? by Stacy Chbosky
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
The Glorious Flight by Alice and Martin Provensen
How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say
Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin
Another Celebrated Dancing Bear by Gladys Scheffrin-Falk
Papa Piccolo by Carol Talley
Very Last First Time by Jan Andrews
Clown of God by Tomie dePaola
Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz
Katy and the Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton
Night of the Moonjellies by Mark Shasha
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost (Susan Jeffers' Illustration)

Beautiful Living Books about Australia

Beautiful Living Books about Australia

This is my list of Children's books about Australia that we are using as we study our beautiful Land Down Under. I will be adding to this list as we go so keep checking back :)

My Country by Dorothea Mackellar

I Love this poem. From the first time I heard it in school I have loved it (but then I love Australia!). This book beautifully illustrates the poem. The illustrations are paintings that show the beauty of the Australian landscape. This book is the perfect way to introduce your child to this poem and begin to learn it.

My Place by Nadia Wheatley

This book follows the history of one piece of land in Sydney through the eyes of the children who have lived there. You can tell that the author loves history and the illustrator really did their homework. Together they have produced a beautiful book.

Note: the book has been around for 20 years and has just been republished and updated. If you are looking for a copy you might want to look for the new one.

Extra Resources to use with this book:
Teacher Notes PDF (direct link) written by the author

Looking for more on the history of sydney? Check out this link.

My Grandfather Marches on Anzac Day by Catriona Hoy

Story is told of one Anzac Day through the eyes of a little girl watching her Grandfather march on Anzac Day. (My guess is this is based on a true experience)

Extra Resources to use with this book:

About the author: Here is her site. She is an Australian Author who has published a few books. Her latest one Puggle about a baby echidna looks beautiful too.

Resources to use with the book from the author.

Want to learn more about Anzac Day? There are lots of resources here

Milestones

Isn't it so exciting when your children move onto the next stage? Zebra came to me at the beginning of the month and said "Mum, I think I'm ready to read Chapter books" She picked out Naughty Amelia Jane by Enid Blyton and started reading. Since the beginning of the month she has read 14 books! I gave her a new notebook and said she has to write the date she finished the book, the title and author of the book in it. She is reading an Enid Blyton book in 2 days!!!!

Reading was such a struggle for her and now she had done it :) I am so excited for her!

Wombat has taken his first step! Which again was so exciting. Godwilling he will have an opperation on his eyes in 3 weeks so as that gets closer I will be blogging less as we plan and prepare for the 8 hour drive to our nearest specialist. It was so exciting that he has progressed so far as we did not expect him to walk before the op.

Magic School Bus Lapbooks

We love the magic school bus DVD's and books and now with Zebra reading chapter books I bought her the set of magic school bus chapter books. I also found this website which has a lapbook for each magic school bus book.

Button Snake

The Activity Mom has a very interesting activity here - a button snake.

This would make a good workbox activity for preschooler or for a boy who need to learn to button but is not interested in playing dress up or dolls. Great fine motor activity.

Apple and the Arrow Unit Study

We have almost finished our reading of the Apple and the Arrow.

I used the Unit Study at Homeschool Share for the oldest two and we made a Lap n-Note for this book using the Homeschool Share resources.

Rabbit Trails we went on

1. Medieval Times including castles and knights.
We briefly looked at the Medieval Times using the following books and resources:
Living in a Castle by Rupert Matthews - a very simple castle book we borrowed from the library.
Castles, Pyramids and Palaces (an Usborne book) This was another library book. There was really only one page on Castles in this book but the whole book was interesting if you wanted to see different buildings.
Pendragon Castle (a Panorama Pop-up book). This was a fun one as it popped up and showed a real castle in Britain.

Medieval worksheets here including parts of armour.
Notebook pages from Robin Hood Unit Study at Homeschool Share which can be used with this topic.

This page will take you to all the Homeschool Share Connections for the Middle Ages. If you are looking for books to read that cover that time period this is a good starting place.

Costumes:
Zebra wants to make a dress-up. I think she was really after making a knight costume! But here are some of the sites I found while looking for ideas.
Medieval Lady Costume (scroll down)
Lots of ideas here for authentic dress-ups including how to braid a crown (I am not showing Zebra this link or guess what I will be doing EVERY morning for the next few weeks!)

Setting up a Dress-up Box

Games for the Workbox
Medieval Tic Tac Toe
There are games and so much more at this site

Other People's Lapbooks
Medieval History Lapbook from Dawn @ My home sweet home. Here is the Medieval History Unit Study Dawn taught.

2. Apples
We used the cards from Montessori for Everyone to show and learn the life cycle of an apple. This is a free download (On this page - under Botany Life Cycle of an Apple). Zebra used these cards to make a circle wheel book to go in her Lap n-Note showing the life cycle.

Here are all the Apple Connections at Homeschool Share - this is a good starting point if you are looking for apple books to read.

Other People's Apple Lapbooks/Lap n-Notes:
Apple Lapbook @ Albright-News
A is for apple from Ami @ walking by the way. This has perfect ideas for a preschooler.
Work Box Activities:
For Bunny I had a apple alphabet match puzzle (From Child Care Land Scroll down to Apple Alphabet Puzzles). We used only the letters she had learnt so far and had to match the capital to the lower case.

Apple Tree Maths Mat from Homeschool Share (under Preschool Workboxables or Math Workboxes) There is also a apple file folder game here too

More Resources:
I did not use these but want to save them as I think we will use them the next time we study the Middle ages in more detail.
This homeschooling Mum has collected HUNDREDS of links on the middle ages all on one page. How great is that
Build a castle activity (older children).
A good read on toys in the middle ages.
Games played in the middle ages.

Live and Learn has a apple lapbook - I am not really impressed with their lapbooks as most of the pictures are colour and we don't have colour printer at home and if you print them black and white they come in shades of grey and are hard for the kids to colour. It is free though so it might be of interest to someone else.

Sonlight P 4/5 The Starting Point

I have the old Sonlight PK Core but have listed below are the books for the new P 4/5 Core, some of these are new books. This page is a work in progress as I slowly upload the things we have done and are doing as we work our way through this core again and again and again. (There are still 2 more at this stage to enjoy these books!)

Bible
Family-Time Bible in Pictures

World Cultures
The Gods Must be Angry
New Toes for Tia
People from Africa
Then and Now
Things People do

Read-Alouds
American Tall Tales
Children's Book of Virtues
A Child's Book of Art
Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit
The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit
See here for all my links for Peter Rabbit Unit Study
Eric Carle's Animal Animals
The Lion Storyteller Bedtime Book
Milly-Molly-Mandy Story book
Stories from around the world
A Treasury of Mother Goose Rhymes
Uncle Wiggly's Story Book